During the
course of an uprising, there comes a time when decisions far beyond those of
tactics, logistics and the meeting of daily needs must be made. A point is
reached in the struggle where the choice between pursuing one of the various
known paths or choosing to explore the unknown can no longer he ignored.
Unfortunately, it seems that in most cases, this decision, which may he the
most important decision of any revolutionary struggle, is left to chance, to
the random twists of circumstance.

I have been
trying as well as one can from the distance of several thousand miles to keep
informed about the uprising that exploded in Argentina last December. Though
the information has been sparse even in anarchist sources, it is clear that
this is no flash in the pan. The distrust in the rulers has moved well beyond
the realm of mere outrage into the actual practice of self-organization and direct
action on a large scale. The neighborhood assemblies have managed to maintain a
healthy contempt for all politicians and labor union leaders, allowing them to
remain an organ of insurgent struggle. The signs of struggle in neighboring
countries - Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil - could open farther
possibilities.

But over the
past couple of months, the information l have read from Argentina indicates
that the struggle there has reached an important crossroads. Assemblies have
been carrying out occupations of spaces of various sorts in order to develop
activities and projects. When police come to the occupied spaces, demanding to
speak to someone in charge, people tell them, "We are all in charge".
At the same time workers have occupied factories and have had several meetings
to discuss where they want to take this struggle. These meetings have not only
included the factory workers, but also people from the neighborhood assemblies
and unemployed groups. These occupations of spaces by neighborhood assemblies
and of factories by workers mean that more and more of the tools through which
the ruling order operated have been appropriated by the insurgents. The
question now becomes: what will people do with these tools?

A true
revolution cannot simply be a change in the way current social relationships
are managed. Even self-management of the current system of social relationships
remains exploitative and dominating. The whole of society simply comes to
replace the individual bosses and rulers as the exploiter and dominator. This
is why the question of what to do with these tools is so central. The spaces
that have been taken over by the neighborhood assemblies are already seen as
places in which the people involved in these assemblies can carry out the projects
and activities that they consider desirable. They therefore potentially point
to an exploration into new and unknown possibilities for relating and
interacting.

Factories, on
the other hand, were developed for the explicit purpose of milking the maximum
amount of labor at a minimum cost from the workers - in other words,
exploitation is built into them. It is not clear to what extent the Argentine
workers involved in the occupations are questioning their role as workers - the
role assigned to them by capital. A report about the ceramists of Zanon
indicates that the occupying workers there continue to work as they did before,
mass­producing ceramics, and this is how they have maintained their livelihood.
In other words, they have not yet questioned their role as workers in a
practical manner and sought to find new ways to create their lives that are not
based on alienated labor. I state this not as a judgment, but to clam the
fundamental choice about which I have been speaking. The Zanon case is of particular
interest because the workers there have been demanding "nationalization
under workers' control" - a demand that would mean continued involvement
in the market economy and commodity production rather than a dismantling of the
work machine. Not surprisingly, according to the report, union leaders and
human rights organization - con artists from the left wing of the old order -
have been involved in this particular struggle.

But the
workers of Zanon do not represent all workers, and what they have done up to
now could change if the general revolt takes a direction that moves beyond mere
self-management of exploitation. From here, I cannot know the extent of
experimentation and exploration of new ways of relating that are going on. I do
not know whether there are those who are striving to explore ways of creating
what they need and desire outside of the context of work as an activity
separated from life, those who desire to dismantle the factories in order to
open more space and free up more tools for the exploration of other ways of
living. Generally during insurrections, imaginations go wild in the most
positive ways. But there are also always the spokespeople for "realism
", and the people of Argentina have gone through very hard times. The
people of Zanon cannot be blamed if the put their survival before utopian
exploration: a hungry belly makes it hard to dream. But this is precisely how
the old world creeps back in, undermining the libratory experiences of
insurrection.

Precisely
where the uprising in Argentina will go now is hard to guess. Most likely, some
adaptation to the present reality will occur. This does not in any way reflect
upon a lack of revolutionary imagination or tenacity on the part of the
insurgent people in Argentina. The lack of tolerance for politics or leadership
in the neighborhood assemblies and their occupation of spaces for their own
purposes indicate that there is some confused vision of a truly total
transformation. But the reality of a global civilization based on domination
and exploitation of people and the earth still very much exists, and it will
not be willing to lose any of the resources in Argentina, including those that
are human. This is why those of us who would desire to see the Argentine
insurgents take that step into the unknown where work no longer exists as a
sphere separated from life, where all the prisons through which this society
imposes social control - including the factories - have been dismantled, where
people create their lives together on the basis of their needs and desires with
no pre­determined programs which they must follow, cannot simply sit back in
open-mouthed awe of these courageous insurgents. We must examine their struggle
critically, not in order to judge them or tell then: what to do, but in order
to learn from it and use those lessons in developing our own struggle here
where we live. Until there are insurgent struggles, destroying the old world
and beginning to explore new ways of existing and creating our lives,
throughout the world, and particularly in the "West"- the so-called
"first world "- -specific struggles will always be recuperated or
destroyed, with maybe a few insurgents left to struggle on their own. That is
why the necessary form of solidarity with the insurgents in Argentina and in
the rest of the world is that of attack against the ruling civilization and all
of its institutions with the a in: of creating an insurrectional struggle here
as well.